A touchscreen woven into a shirt sleeve

National University of Singapore College of Design and Engineeringon Nature (published research)

A National University of Singapore team wove a 96 by 54 pixel multitouch display into a garment's inner forearm. It scrolls photos, plays video and runs a calculator.

Build sheet

Display: 96 x 54 px, 8-bit color
Area: 6.6 x 4.3 in, inner forearm
Construction: Multilayer LED fiber
Published in: Nature

Can I build this?Expert · AI 1/5 · $10,000+

Difficulty: Expert
AI-buildability: 1/5
Time: Several months
Cost: $10,000+

Parts

LED fiber insulated wire multitouch sensor

Tools

laser-guided soldering systemfiber drawing equipmenttextile loom or knitting machine

Starter prompt

Based on "A touchscreen woven into a shirt sleeve" on Afterware: https://afterware.xyz/p/a-touchscreen-woven-into-a-shirt-sleeve

You're not going to replicate this fiber display at home. If you want a wearable screen with a microcontroller, try: pick an ESP32-S3 with a small round or rectangular LCD and capacitive touch, and write firmware that shows a scrolling photo gallery and a notification list driven by BLE from a phone. Start with the display and touch drivers before adding any wearable mounting.

Estimates based on the original write-up. How AI-buildability is scored. Building with an AI assistant? Connect it to Afterware (free MCP server).

Story

The display is a 6.6 by 4.3 inch patch on the inner forearm, built from 96 by 54 pixels with 8-bit color. Each display fiber is a thread about one millimeter thick carrying a strip of LEDs. The team used laser-guided molten solder to bond connections at precise points along insulated wire, then drew the result into a multilayer fiber. More than 5,000 chips and over 20,000 electrical components went into the fabric.

In testing, the shirt connected to a phone and scrolled photos, showed notifications, took voice commands over Bluetooth and ran a calculator. Video plays at 30 frames per second without sound, dropping to 25 with audio. The team says the fabric is as breathable as denim and survived 1,000 bend cycles and 50 washing machine runs with the display and touch sensors still working.

Resources · 2

Demo video Popular Science coverage